On this day when I carry fear
like a stone, when it burdens me,
slows me, when I don’t try to
pretend the fear is not there, what a gift
when, after walking for miles
beneath the clear and vast blue sky,
it is not so much that the fear
goes away, it’s more that I feel
gathered up by the blue and
lifted up by sky the way a child
might be lifted by her mother,
as if my weight is no hindrance
and my fear is less boulder,
more pebble. I see more plainly then
how small my life, and how my fear,
though great, could never be big enough
to crush the sky. Sometimes
I need only to walk outside
to remember my place in the scale
of things. There is not one moment
when I am not doing the real work
of being alive. Even in the heaviest,
most frightened moments. Even
in these hours when I’m weightless,
when I swear, even burdened, I could fly.